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Employment

Jorie Graham

Listen the voice is American it would reach you it has wiring in its swan’s neck where it is always turninground to see behind itself as it has no past to speak of except some nocturnaljournals written in woods where the fight has just taken place or is about to take place for placethe pupils have firelight in them where the man a surveyor or a tracker still has no idea what is comingthe wall-to-wall cars on the 405 for the ride home from the cubicle or the corner office – how bigthe difference – or the waiting all day again in line till your number is called it will be called which meansexactly nothing as no one will say to you as was promised by all eternity ‘ah son, do youknow where you came from, tell me, tell me your story as you have come to this Station’ – no, they did away with the stations and the jobs the way of lifeand your number, how you hold it, its promise on its paper,if numbers could breathe each one of these would be an exhalation, the last breath of somethingand then there you have it: stilled: the exactness: the number: your number. That is why they can use it. Because it was living and now is stilled. The transition from one state to the other – they give, you receive – provides its shape.A number is always hovering over something beneath it. It is invisible, but you can feel it. To make a sumyou summon a crowd. A large number is a form of mob. The larger the number the more terrifying.They are getting very large now. The thing to do right awayis to start counting, to say it is my turn, mine to step into the stream of blood for the interview, to say I can do it, to say I am notone, and then say two, three, four and feel the blood take you in from above a legionsingle file heading out in formation across a desert that will not count.